"Thats you in 2 months!"

I hear that comment every day. I hear that comment 6 times a day at least, it always comes when we see a guy kiss his wife, or when marraige is talked about it church, or we see some one doing something really fun that I can't. my companion thinks it's funny... But i do too so I join in ha ha! IN fact I might have started it =p.

We have had alot of cool sucsess this last week. Infact I probably could have wrote a whole email about it by tuesday on all of the miracles we saw and have that take our whole emailing time. But I didn't write those ones down so they are only gonna be in my journal.

We had to book it from a lesson on our bikes to be able to make it to a less active lesson on time. Yup we wern't on time, infact this is the first week my companion has rode a bike in the last 10 years.

But I am kind and I took the nice specialized and left him with the beat up girl road bike anyways =p. I payed my dues right? I deserve the nice one=p jk he doesn't know the diffrence and it has a nicer seat anyways. But because of us being 20 minutes late no one answered the door and we went to do our back up plan and go to the bus stop and call people while there. While we did that a investigator who we havn't been able to contact in a while walked up to us and told us she wants to meet with us and still wants to be baptized. We were ment to miss that appointment.

We had a dinner appoint with the zoneleaders and several older members. They were so adamant that we come durring out p-day it really bothered the zoneleaders but we went and was on time like they Demanded.

When we showed up there was the 4 members and a girl my age there. It was obvious this was one of their grand daughters who was my age. We ate dinner and None of the 3 other missionaries even tried to talk to her! It was obvious she wasn't a member and they never even tried. I talked to her alot and then I found out she has been training in MMA recently and we really kicked it off!

I started asking her questions about religious back ground making it obvious to the other missionaries on what I was doing... Nope none of them even tried to talk to her. I kept subtly working it and taught a little and tried passing it to a zone leader. Nope they were so dumb! I tried passing it to all 3 and none of them had the guts to talk.

The spiritual thought came and the zoneleaders did the thought and they totaly ignored that she was a nonmember and the members set this up!!!!!  As they testified on the role of fathers and was about to close, I kicked in and changed that to the Gospel blesses families and individuals and then testified and invited to learn and she accepted. I have not stopped giving any of them grief for that, they didn't even try... Well shes in my area anyways so I guess thats my blessing!

We had a lesson with our new investigators  (the ones who has been feeding us who we knocked into on my first day). We brought 2 members with us to that lesson and they ate with us. They turned out to be PERFECT fellowshippers. One was Lutherine gone non denominational, and the members one used to be Lutherine and the other used to be non denominational. One used to be a nurse and our investigator used to be a nurse. They had so much to talk about!!!

And all of them are old so they were able to talk about old people stuff too that we couldn't. =p Durring the lesson we opened up to mosiah 18:8-10 and my companion started using his new found teaching skills. After the verse my companion asked what they thought about it, and she had a odd responce which was drowed out by the members responce.

My companion then tried to kick up, but I shot right back after the member was done and asked her about it and got her to bring up that when she read the verse the spirit touched her heart and told her "SO what do you have against being baptized?" She told us about it and I asked her if she knew what that was, she responded that it was the spirit and thats what God wants her to do. Boom, baptism invite.

But I couldn't get her to accept (the other sister already accepted). She told us she wasn't sure what our religion was all about and I tried to resolve that concern. But we eventually had to book it to our appointment that we were terribly late to so we ran out. But E. kratz ran back in to use the bathroom. They thought we were gone and he heard the discussion between the members and the investigator said " I know what I felt , that was God telling me to do that! But I know nothing about your church still, and I am not sure what will happen with the people at my other church if I leave. But I know that was God...". =p They were pretty determined to see our church next week. I bet they will join before I leave.


One of our investigators almost died in Child Birth. I figured that was a good excuse to cancel our appointment.

I have so much more to say miracle wise this week but I don't have time!

Every night I can't go to bed on time any more. It's just like How it was when I was back home how I would lie awake with my eyes closed for hours. My tiredness has gone away basically, but I can't sleep now.

I keep thinking about my goal of playing a essential role in the baptism of 20 people. I need to improve, I need to learn more! I am not stressed about it, but there is a sence of urgency. I flipped through PMG the other day and I looked at every main subject in it. I can honestly say I have mastered all of it (my opinion) but like 3 principals. And I have been racking my mind on how to master them my whole mission, but I don't know how because PMG doesn't teach you at all on those subjects.

 I am making good progress on them but I need to master them! So can you help me? One of them I wanna hear from parents and RM's about; On PMG pg 8 theres a quote by e. holland about being devastated when people don't read the BOM. Now I can do that with the BOM sometimes but I am not good at it.  The spirit taught me a while ago that Being "Devastated" can Instill Godly sorrow which can give people desires to act in faith and eventually repent. How do you do that!?!? Mom how do you be devastated so us kids know that we did something terrible and need to change? I wanna be able to do that with any principal of the gospel or life. there is loads of mothers who I am certain has mastered this, help!

The second one I wanna know about is family History in finding. PMG sucks with that topic there is only 2 sentences in my opinion that is actually useful info. I wanna know what other people in other missions do if there is some one who has posted something, because I have NEVER seen another missionary try and use it in finding here at all unless I taught them what I know about it and I suck at it!

But the times I have used it good was SUPER succsessful and it totally broke barriers that you wouldn't be able to break by teaching about restored truths or questions of the soul. I basically need to master this one so I can pass it on to help others here since NO ONE uses it. ANd if its that important that the prophet put it in PMG...! So if you can I wanna know good questions to ask and how other people do it. I have been working on this one all week and I have made good progress but I have worked on that my whole mission and I still have only got 1 potential from it my whole mission and passed out maybe 12 Family history cards.

My goal is I wanna get in and teach some one and start them on their family history, basically all I need to do is be able to create a need for it and get into their door and I can do the rest. When ever I ask any missionary or my mission prez i never hear anything that works or that they actually tried. specifically doorknocking.

Help please?!

Well I gotta go Bye I love you have a good day!

Don't get shot!

Love
--

- Elder Truman Rex Crockett

MMA missionary

"Oh, yeah, I  have definitely been listening to the music you gave (advised) me!  My Spotify playlist is named Truman Crockett because of you! XD"-(former companion) Zack Baker =p

I realized this week that for months now I have been using body wash for shampoo... I thought it was the same type I bought before, just a different bottle..... My life is so hard.


My toothbrush snapped in half this week =(


I realized that I am doomed my whole life to teach the gospel and to teach people how to teach, Because I can't stand going to church and not feeling the spirit because the people who teach have no teaching skills at all...

I know thats harsh but when I have investigators at church and they are teaching exaltation, outerdarkness, confession to bishop, the word of wisdom, how to recognize the Holy Ghost....in a lesson that was supposed to be on baptism and baptism was never taught once except for reading the first paragraph from the book.......no questions, no scriptures, no involvement....... I was about to walk out.


This place is number 1! We wake up and play basket ball with  members and missionaries in the morning, our car has a touch screen set of buttons on the outside door to punch in a code incase you lock your keys in the car (and we know the code). The cars air conditioning is cold in 4 seconds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am like converted to this thing!

We had a member tell us at a dinner appointment that he thought that he knew some people who we could teach, he went over and home taught them (without us) picked them up as investigators for us, and put them on date to be baptized and then told us about it! =p

The first door I knocked on here a nice older lady came to the door and said she had a sister who was taught by the missionaries a long time ago in Cheboygan and that it did alot of good for her and she wanted to meet with us later that day. We came back and taught her and her sister and picked them up as investigators. "Oh that makes so much sense why there is so many different churches now!", " You know I believe what you say he must have been called to be a prophet if all of that happned.".

We came back for our second lesson with them and they had a meal prepared for us (we just came from a dinner appointment where I stuffed myself....My life is so hard! I ate even more!) and they invited both of their neighbors to join them for the lesson. It was hard teaching all 4 of them especially since we had to rehash the restoration to make the plan of salvation make more sense to the neighbors. "THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE! We lived with God before we lived here! thats amazing!". They are pretty sweet!=p they have fed us every time we go over now too. Hungry howies, burgers, spagetti... I wish every first door I knocked on was like this!

I had a tooth ache this week! I was devastated!!!!! I hated it! I couldn't chew on anything with that side of my mouth! It was a constant pain too. That was my one fear of being on a mission that I would have cavities that would cause a tooth ache... 3 days went by and I kept beasting it out thinking "only 3 months" ha ha. Yah I got sick of that thought pretty quick and begged for my tooth to be healed in prayer. I woke up a day later and it's been like 4 days and I havn't felt any pain in it since. =p

So my district leader (by the way I am not sure how I feel about not teaching district meeting any more, but it is SUPER nice to be able to study what I want for once!!) was transfered in when I was, He decided trade offs and so right after our first district meeting week 2 I was staying in my area for trade offs with a brand new missionary. He had no clue how long I have been in the area (I know Now).

Also turns out that wednesday was the day we had to do car rotations and I had to give up the new love of my life. So My companion would not stop annoying me on what I needed to do and where I needed to go to give the other set of missionaries the car. Well all of that annoyance was for nothing! I took my companions GPS (he wanted to take it on trade offs... "Yah whatever give me that, they already have 2") and called the elders to get their address since there was no way I was going to be able to remember those directions my companion gave me to their appartment.

When I called They told me to "meet us at the church", So I went to my church and waited there since they live close to our area... I waited like 10 minutes and called and they were TICKED!!! I had made them late for their appointment because they didn't commuicate to me that they wanted me to go to the stake center. So We punched it in the GPS and drove there. WHen we got there they took off immediately...

Yes...we were alone... not in our area... neither of us with any clue where we were.... or how to go home... I didn't have the oppertunity to plan for being there.... no clue what to do.... 40 minutes away from our area...members at work... I started to miss my mom =p...


I racked my brain to remember the bus route since I have been staring at the maps so much, I remembered that there was a bus route that went close to the church, I just had to go East! I looked at the sky to find out where the sun rose from... It was about 1pm and directly above us... We worked the GPS untill we found out the directon we needed to head and we walked untill we found a bus stop and just sat and waited.

We bought bus tickets the day before and used them to get on the bus about a half hour after we got to the stop. It was like 91 degress and 40% humidity or somethin we were dripping wet! While on the bus we asked around to know what to do to get out of Grandrapids and into Wyoming. A lady just happened to take that route ever day, so we rode the bus to central station and there we had to get off. And turns out the only other bus that was there was the one we needed to get on so we basically studdied the map to find out what stop I wanted and then jumped right on. It was awesome!!!

Elder Burgous (who is also from arizona and knows exactly where we live) has had a pretty adventurous first week being on trade offs with me! I really worked to brain wash him with the short time I had! All we did was walk in the heat that day, we thought we were free from it for a lesson, we went in and their airconditioning didn't work. After that we did service and was in a atic for 2 hours. We showed up for the dinner appointment that night and every one could smell us=(.

I got to fight my district leader (trained in MMA for years)! His companion who had the bus adventure with me is dying for his turn to fight me now (wrestler for 5 years)=p. I am pretty sure I am gonna be whooped! Elder Maufil'o was a hard fight! he is 90 lbs heavier than me, it was so hard to push that guy off of me! he was so strong! Neither of us tapped out but we both got super beat and gave up, he would have won point wise though. His companion is even more experienced and heavier.....


I have been so beat up and tired lately!!! (at one point he picked me up while I had him and guard and slammed me on the ground...but thats not why I only have like one bruise from that) I don't know what it is! The heat? walking alot? I have been sleeping at like every opportunity I have because I am so beat!


Well I gotta go

Bye I love you have a good day!

Don't get shot

--

- Elder Truman Rex Crockett

This place is Number 1!

I love this place it's so nice! I am now in Wyoming Michigan, a city that runs right into grandrapids. I share a ward with 2 other sets of missionaries. I am fed EVERY day and I always get to have dinner with either one set or both sets of the other missionaries, it's a party! I like live 3 minutes from the church and the zone leaders.

My apartment is the nicest apartment I have ever had! It's clean, not dammaged, I have a garage with a garage door a washer, dryer, dish washer, bench press, large bathroom, my apartment is a buzz in where I only have 2 neighbors and so my place doesn't smell RAINK like the others have. We already have bikes!!!!!!!! My bike is a SWEET specialized road bike, i would take it over my one back home thats how nice it is, already has bike locks and helmets, no repairs necessary!!! I have a comfy couch.

We drive a 2016 Ford Fusion!!!!! I love that car so much!!!!!!!!! It is the best/nicest car I have ever driven. It has everything! A backing camera, all wheel drive, electrict adjusting seats, blue tooth to our phone so I can talk while I drive or chill in the seat without holding a phone to my face (I feel like freaking Captain Kirk when I do) I can adjust the sterio volume and settings from the stering wheel. I can pop it into stick shift (sport) mode and the shifters are the cool hand ones on the steering wheel.


I popped it in sport mode so I could do it to beat some one off the line I went from like 0-50 in like 2 seconds!!! the Robot the monitors our car freaked out!!! It reported it to the mission office as "aggressive driving" but Yolo swag that was sick! The seats are super comfortable too. I love this car! I want one =p.

I was a little sad because I didn't want to leave my sour patch melons in Kalamazoo, and I wasn't wanting to carry it all day long so I left it there. Thats the one negative.... But positive to that though is we were invited to the zoneleaders for lunch one day and they gave me a bag of sour patch melons that they didn't want =p. Church is true when it's like that!

The city is as close to Mesa as you can get in Michigan. The neibor hoods are insane and curvy and don't connect, but the main roads are a grid and intersect at every mile; the east west ones are numbers and count down by 8 every new main road! I already know every main road and how to get there in my area ( you know all like 30 square miles of my area, if that)


Elder Hartley and Elder Miles are in my zone!


This place is number 1!

I rode the city bus the other day for a first time in my life! They have a great city bus system so we used it on carfast day. There is Loads of spanish people every where here. Like every 4 people I talk to I get some one who only speaks spanish (so they say, I've caught a few lying to me) So there is a sets of spanish missionaries who give us referrals all the time because they knock and find english people for us to teach.

"Cotton wool falling like snow in..." June from like every tree.

My first day here I was in a trio and to celebrate transferrs we went out to a Mexican food Shack (just like back home) It was so ghetto the menu was partly in spanish and when I asked what cow toung can be in they didn't understand my english and started listing off diffrent types of meats =p. I had a HUGEEEEEEE Smothered burrito and cow toung tacos! Yes my food was tasting me as it went down.

My first day we had a lesson with a investigator, A member came out with us. TURNS OUT that he is Alison Linfords First cousin!!!! He is also our ward mission leader and he is great at his calling ( from what I have seen so far and heard), We even have ward missionaries too!

This last week has seemed like a month, not because it sucked, infact it was actually fast but the weather changed from like spring to summer. It went from around 60 to 91 degrees and humid this week.

I havn't unpacked at all, I have unpacked socks as I need then and garments, bathing supplies and study materials... Yup I have even worn the same white shirt like every day. The only reason why I unpacked and Ironed a new one was because while we were getting our bus passes a guy threw a foam cup full of DR.Pepper  and pegged me in the shoulder with it causing it to explode all over the both of us. even then It didn't seem to dirty so I almost kept it on for another day =p.

 I don't know why but I have been so beat here!!! Every lunch break I have to have a nap , I fall asleep right after planning unlike usual pushing off bed untill the last second.

My companion has been out 11 months, I know president told me I am not training but... he can plan... =p #betterthanstartingatthetop I guess... He has been eating up all of my discourse on missionary work though, I have been brain washing him HARD on how to be a effective teacher and finder.

We went shopping (because we have nothing at all, not even basic things like measuring spoons) I went in the vegtible section and my companion said " vegitibles are so much more expensive than chicken and rice!!!"... yah I aint about that rice and chicken life, So i bought loads so I would have more than the 20 lb bag of rice and frozen chicken at home.


I got to take a toilet off the ground and ripp off the lamenent tile flooring and cut out pieces of the bathroom wood floor to install a new subfloor!!!! I even learned how to fix a door so it hangs how it's supposed to without taking the whole trimm appart.

This place is number 1 and I havn't even told you about the people we are teaching yet But I now don't have time I gotta hit the road so I can chill with every one else in the zone. To be quick I don't have to rebuild the area, we already have a teaching pool and I found 4 new investigators this week too that are SUper solid, I am certain I can accomplish my goal now.


Bye I love you have a good day

Don't get shot!

--

- Elder Truman Rex Crockett

. There is rest for the wicked! Who knew?!

I got my transfer call and I am being transfered to Wyoming (3) which is in the Grand rapids Zone. I totally called that I would be transfered to that zone since they are only at 37% of where they need to be to accomplish their part of the mission goal of 280 baptisms for the year. But I was surprised when They released me as a district leader and a trainer. So for the first time since before I started training last May I am getting a experienced companion. And I can go back to falling asleep durring district meeting =p jk.

 But I will be in the biggest ward in the mission from what the assistants told me and I will be working it with the Zone leaders and the Sister Training Leaders, so that should be fun!


I will be on the transfer van on Monday So I wont talk to you untill next monday.


Quote of the week "...(she) Ignores me like Mom ignores the Laundry!". =p HA ha hahAA HA HA HA ha ha !!!! I died!


While we were doorknocking for days we had a rabid squirrel chase us! It was freaky man!!!! It had a funky evil face it did weird things with it's paws and would run really close to us. We were freakin OUT!!!! It also looked like It had part of it's tail smashed buy a car. It followed us for like 5 houses and we tried to avoid it but it would keep comming!


We got a call from a member in the K1 ward and she wanted to give us a gift before we went and before she moved. It was a picture of a bunch of us missionaries none of us looking at the camera or with eyes open or ready for the picture. While there she told me that she found another missionary post about me on their blog.

 I was a little shocked but she pulled it up on her phone and she went all the way back to this missionaries email from when he was in the MTC (when I was there too) and she read it to me "A couple nights ago we all saw Elder Crockett (left for Michigan today) freaking lockpicking this door and we all watched." that is a direct quote I took a picture of it. I burst out laughing when I saw it. Yes, yes that did happen.

 He must have been in my zone or something in thet MTC. I am AMAZED that this lady found that. She then as we were about to leave said she wanted to keep in touch and said it would be easy for me because she can just read my blog, I again looked at her weirdly and she pulled it up on her phone. Hi Sis Jarvis. DId you know there is a website that streams every missionary blog to one website and you can look up peoples blogs by mission? I didn't until she explained how she found me.


So we were door knocking for days this week and we knocked on a door and I was really working at creating a need and trying to help this guy realized there is stuff he doesn't know about the gospel and eventually a lady walks up from the side walk to us on the door step and she asks if we are Mormons. We said we are and the guy we are tallking to was like "Oh I was baptized into your church!"....... and then the lady said the she was too and then showed me a picutre of her favorite sister missionary, a missionary who I met before. We set up appointments and got info to put them on the directory since they wern't.


We came back for the lesson with the guy and me and him got along well, he was planning on taking some fighting classes in different weird forms. but hey, it's fighting. And I noticed that he had a game cube under his tv with a whole bunch of games in a glass cabinet. we talked about it a little and we played alot of the same games (he is like 60).


Before we started the lesson he went to use the bathroom and I immediately crashed on my knees and opened the glass cabinet to look at all the games. When he came out I was still on my knees looking at all of his stuff he had the Gameboy advanced so he could plug it in the game cube to use it on Animal crossing and other games he had controlers memory cards and several games I love, he even had the thing to plug into the bottom of the gamecube that I had never seen before.


 He then told me that he was looking to get rid of it all and said I could have it all.=p The Little kid in me was SCREAMING and jumping for Joy!!! =p So after the lesson he boxed it all up for me. I threw away all the game cases and put the games in a cd case that held them all, donated the console to good will and everything else is now in a package on it's way home to you guys; cuz I don't need to carry around that junk. Happy Birthday to me! (in 3 months). Even though I doubpt I will play with most of it the Keyids will like it.


Later that same day (the day before transfer calls) The M's had us over for a steak dinner out side. OH MAN!!! that was WAY good! After wards we had a lesson where we read 1 Ne 8 and 11. It was amazing all I did was I prefaced that chapter 8 was "very symbolic of different things" and then we read the chapter. When we finished reading and we asked what they thought about the chapter T jumped in and told us not to tell her what it means yet.

She then explained to us what the whole chapter was about and hit the freakin nail right on the head! We didn't even need to explain!!! She told us that something really clicked in her head while she read it. DANG STRAIGHT IT DID! SPIRIT! SPIRIT! SPIRIT!! The only thing she didn't know was what the great a spacious building, the fruit, and the iron rod. It was way cool. But I Still went hard on that chapter because I figured I would get transfered and I wanted to really tell her the garbage she is going to get and what she needs to do no matter what people say or what happens. After that she told us that at work she had a co worker make a snarky comment about her about to become a mormon..... But it didn't phase her, and it really showed her the truth of what I was saying.


They then took us out to get Icecream! It was like the best day in the world. Got a game cube and everything I ever dreamed about getting for it as a kid, was fed a steak dinner, had a KILLER lesson, and finished the day with a sun setting while eating turtle Icecream. Church is true when you have days like that!

 I was totally fulfilled and knew I did the best I could for This area. Got my transfer call the next day and now it's 2nd p-day!!! Saturday is a special day, it's the day that we have our, sec-ond pppppppppp-day! ive been singing that all week.=p After this I am going to the beach, then to dinner with a member when pdays over, then church the next day dk for like 3 hours and then I am off to a new area that I don't even have to flipp! With a companion that I don't have to brain wash to my philosophies (I probably still will) that actually is teaching people. Church is true, church is true!


Gained the Lead. Lost the lead.

12 weeks remaining

Runnning RIOT!



Bye I love you sleep good an have nice dreams!

Love you all!

Don't get Shot!

--

- Elder Truman Rex Crockett